The Open Government Partnership is an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens.

ARTICLE 19 has joined this collective initiative in order to reiterate our serious concern that governments around the world have been routinely intercepting and retaining the private communications of entire populations, in secret, without particularised warrants and with little or no meaningful oversight.

We, the undersigned civil society organisations, affirm our deep commitment to the goals of the Open Government Partnership, which in its declaration endorsed "more transparent, accountable, responsive and effective government," founded on the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We join other civil society organisations, human rights groups, academics and ordinary citizens in expressing our grave concern over allegations that governments around the world, including many OGP members, have been routinely intercepting and retaining the private communications of entire populations, in secret, without particularised warrants and with little or no meaningful oversight. Such practices allegedly include the routine exchange of "foreign" surveillance data, bypassing domestic laws that restrict governments' ability to spy on their own citizens.

These practices erode the checks and balances on which accountability depends, and have a deeply chilling effect on freedom of expression, information and association, without which the ideals of open government have no meaning.

As Brazil's President, Dilma Rousseff, recently said at the United Nations, "In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy."

Activities that restrict the right to privacy, including communications surveillance, can only be justified when they are prescribed by law, are necessary to achieve a legitimate aim, and are proportionate to the aim pursued. Without firm legislative and judicial checks on the surveillance powers of the executive branch, and robust protections for the media and public interest whistleblowers, as outlined in the Tshwane Principles....... abuses can and will occur.

We call on all governments, and specifically OGP members, to:

- Recognise the need to update understandings of existing privacy and human rights law to reflect modern surveillance technologies and techniques;

- Commit in their OGP Action Plans to complete by October 2014 a review of national laws, with the aim of defining reforms needed to regulate necessary, legitimate and proportional State involvement in communications surveillance; to guarantee freedom of the press; and to protect whistleblowers who lawfully reveal abuses of state power;

- Commit in their OGP Action Plans to transparency on the mechanisms for surveillance, on exports of surveillance technologies, aid directed towards implementation of surveillance technologies, and agreements to share citizen data among states.

Access to Information:

More from Access to Information

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International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions 9 October 2014

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International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions 7 March 2014

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This publication is a component of the National Endowment for Democracy, (NED) funded project that has unearthed a dismal level of denial to disclose information in Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Government in Liberia.

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